Rihanna claims that "S&M" is about her love/hate relationship with the media. Apparently her paparazzi are using whips and chains.
It really was so easy for Linda Ronstadt to score a hit with her Buddy Holly cover of "It's So Easy." She would sometimes change the lyric to: "It's so easy to have a hit, all you have to do is recycle it."
Bob Dylan's original version of "Mr. Tambourine Man," released on his album Bringing It All Back Home, has no tambourine, just guitars and harmonica.
"After Midnight" was written by the Oklahoma guitarist J.J. Cale, who was dirt poor until Eric Clapton recorded his song and turned it into a hit.
Jethro Tull lead singer Ian Anderson wrote "Aqualung" after looking at pictures of homeless men that his wife took. She got a co-writing credit on the song.
k.d. lang is a credited writer on the Rolling Stones song "Anybody Seen My Baby?" because it sounds so much like her hit "Constant Craving."
Keyboard great David Sancious talks about his work with Sting, Seal, Springsteen, Clapton and Aretha, and explains what quantum physics has to do with making music.
"Mony Mony," "Crimson and Clover," "Draggin' The Line"... the hits kept coming for Tommy James, and in a plot line fit for a movie, his record company was controlled by the mafia.
Have you got the smarts to know which of these graduation song stories are real?
Phil was a songwriter, producer and voice behind many Philadelphia soul classics. When disco hit, he got an interesting project: The Village People.
Todd Rundgren explains why he avoids "Hello It's Me," and what it was like producing Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell album.
In the name of song explanation, Al talks about scoring heroin for William Burroughs, and that's not even the most shocking story in this one.